My Immortal Beloved

My Immortal Beloved (Chapter 9)

"You're an Original aren't you?" Lisette asked, he nodded. "You've been moonlighting as a priest? Not a bad cover I suppose." It was actually pretty brilliant as he explained that he could use the excuse of helping a new church when the time came for him to move on. He was automatically accepted by the community as a man of the cloth, it was a really good plan that had obviously been working for quite some time.

"I've waited for you a long time, you know," he said raising an eyebrow at her as he leaned against the back of a pew.

"How's that?"

"It came to me in a vision, many years ago, before you were created and probably before you were even born. 'Only she with hair like hell's fire shall save our race from destruction.' You look exactly as I remember."

"Save the race from destruction?" Lisette was having trouble wrapping her head around what she was hearing.

"You are our salvation, the one who will save our race from the wrath of the Sovereign. Only one may seek forgiveness for the sins of the many."

"You're making me sound like Jesus and it's freaking me out a little."

"You were just willing to sacrifice yourself for an angry mob to satisfy the demands of a bloodthirsty vampire," he reminded her with a smirk.

"That was bullshit and you know it," Lisette replied, smiling a little herself. "I would have never offered myself up if I hadn't killed him already. And by the way I cleared up his campsite, so nobody will stumble across it and either think someone else has gone missing or think that he's still around." The Priest nodded and then looked up at her suddenly as though he'd just remembered something.

"Goodness where are my manners? I suppose I should introduce myself properly, my name is Father Thomas, uh, Michael Thomas."

"That's quite a modern name for someone your age," she teased.

He smiled at her, "It's changed a bit over the centuries, my given name is Mikhael Tomas," he replied, pronouncing his name "mick-hy-al toe-moss"

Lisette reached out to shake Father Thomas's hand, "I'm Lisette Duvall, created a little over two hundred years ago."

"Oh my dear, I know all about you. I knew when you would be changed, why, and that you would immediately destroy your maker. I knew that you'd become a slayer as a result and that you hold the human life in very high regard. I even know that you prefer the company of women over that of men." He raised an eyebrow slightly as a smile tugged at his lips once again"

"The only thing I don't know about you is how you're going to save us all from the wrath of the Sovereign or why you were chosen to do so."

"I guess we're both stuck there because I don't even know how to find the Sovereign, much less how to save a race from them. And if the Sovereign hates half breeds so much, why would it be one who saves us all? "

"Those are questions that you will need to find answers to yourself."

Lisette glanced out of a nearby window, lost in thought for a moment as she watched the last of the bodies being brought out into ambulances. She had always been on a mission to save humans from evil, but even she could never have guessed that this was her true path in life.

"It's funny that I never set out to save vampires, only humans, and now, somehow I'm going to end up saving us all?" Father Thomas gave her a wan smile.

"Life rarely works out the way we expect it to, dear."

"Clearly."

"Did you want to go down to the morgue and survey the bodies?" Lisette nodded.